Vani Hari: State-level artificial-dye bans and school-food legislation
Advancing
Hari’s state-level dye work ran alongside — and, by her account, laid the groundwork for — the federal phaseout. She traveled with Calley Means and Jason Karp supporting state bills to remove artificial dyes from school food and statewide, per her own account on foodbabe.com. She credits this state-by-state groundwork for building the pressure that led to the federal action.
Hari notes that West Virginia became the first state to ban all artificial dyes from food in March 2025. Multiple other states have since moved — Utah, Virginia, and Texas’s warning-label approach among them. The federal industry response has been aggressive: industry lobbyists are fighting the state laws via the AFIT campaign, and the International Association of Color Manufacturers sued West Virginia over its ban.
The state-first strategy mirrors Hari’s longtime argument that state action forces national reformulation: companies cannot practically maintain separate recipes for each state, so a few strict states effectively set national standards. The lawsuits and the AFIT ad buys show how seriously the industry takes that threat.
Timeline
- March 2025 — West Virginia becomes the first state to ban all artificial dyes from food, per Hari’s account.
- 2025–2026 — Hari travels with Calley Means and Jason Karp supporting state dye-removal and school-food bills; Utah, Virginia, and Texas (warning labels) take action.
- 2026 — The International Association of Color Manufacturers sues West Virginia over its ban, and industry lobbyists push back through AFIT.
